Ch. Jolihem Foreclip Christy Bella

Introduction to Line Breeding

Ch. Jolihem Forclip Christy Bella
To breed true to type each breed must have been developed by close breeding and inbreeding among a small group of ancestors, either through many generations by selecting characteristics from a more variable population, or through intensely selecting from a very small population over relatively few generations. This is because breeding closely related stock increases the chance that identical hereditary units from a common ancestor will be passed from one generation to the next. Through inbreeding and close breeding a desirable recessive trait is more likely to be expressed since a recessive gene can be masked by a dominant gene in a heterozygous population. This is why linebreeding (a less intense form of close breeding) increases the chance of having homozygous offspring and fixes desirable breed traits that have been selected for. To all intents and purposes, inbreeding does not create undesirable traits, but it can increase the expression of those which are already in the heterozygous population.